India is the country of farmers and agriculture! Well, every country has farmers and agriculture system, considering it is the main source of food for humankind. India however, is specifically an agricultural country because it is the backbone of our economy. Agriculture plays a vital role in supporting and stabilising the revenue streams of the country. India has all the 15 major climates of the world. We have around 52% of the total land that is cultivable as compared to the average of 11% in the rest of the countries. Indian agricultural system is as diversified as the variety of the product landscape we see in our day to day lives.

We are world’s largest Milk manufacturers, 2nd largest Fruits & Vegetable growers and our livestock numbers totally dominate the rest of the world at a whopping count of nearly 300 million cattle & buffaloes. Indian Agribusiness market was recorded at $244.74 Billion in the financial year 2016 and the market size of agriculture and allied sector is rising at a recorded CAGR of 6.64%. We stay in an agrarian country in which around 70% of the total population depends directly or indirectly upon agriculture. All the facts and figures seem to depict a healthy and green Indian agriculture industry. Despite all so goody-goody statistics, we are facing problems like farmer suicides, bad crops, demand & supply gap to name a few. We are in a desperate need of a solution which can help the farmers and reestablish the harmony. Today Pick My Story has a tale to tell, the story of a young man from Solapur, Maharashtra who seem to be making strides in solving agribusiness problems.

Behold, Anil Lade!

A graduate of Symbiosis University in Pune and a resident of Sangola, Solapur, Anil comes from a family of farmers who own a pomegranate farm in the region. The agricultural background Anil belongs to pointed out the problems farmers face in their day-to-day lives. The realisation of that helped him in coming up with the technological solution, Marketyard, which is designed to help and revolutionise the agribusiness in India. When Pick My Story interviewed Anil about his venture, the 27-year-old young entrepreneur had some answers which were a true reflection of his passion for helping farmers.

What is Marketyard and how did it start?

Marketyard is an android-based mobile application which enables users to Buy-Sell-Rent ‘everything’ related to Agriculture using Classifieds! To put in simpler words, it is the amalgamation of Justdial and OLX business models which has the best of both! A few months ago I resigned from Indus Towers to work full-time on Marketyard. Me and two other Directors started Marketyard Agrisolutions Pvt. Ltd. after putting in countless efforts, hours and around 4 Lakhs on Marketing & Promoting the app. Through the entire process, we had an aligned vision of designing a farmer friendly product & building the brand ‘Marketyard’!

What prompted you to come up with Marketyard?

I come from a family which massively depends on agriculture to earn its bread and butter. I have personally experienced that the farmers lose a lot of money because of the Dalaals in the wholesale markets as they block the valid price. As a result of that, despite all the hard work farmers do, they have no control over the price margin. Farmers have to depend on them because the middle-men bring business to the farmers. The more traders these Dalaals brought larger chunk of commission they took. It was a vicious cycle and I wanted to develop a solution which will break it.

So how does it work?

I wanted Marketyard to be an easily usable app for farmers so that they can readily get the required information on their finger tips. Keeping that in mind, we designed a very user-friendly UI through which all the stakeholder can get direct access to information posted by other users & they can fulfil their requirements by connecting with them. On top of that, we don’t charge the user for using the platform at all. We are primarily targeting the young farmer’s group who use android based applications and have the capability to use the technology-based solutions for Agribusiness. As you can see in the video, our goal is to offer the users all agrisolutions on one platform.

Any Expansion Plans in Agribusiness Sector?

“We aim to bring all Agriculture related stakeholders such as farmer, trader, retailer, transporters, etc. on a single Digital Platform, thereby eliminate the influence of commission agents”, said the young entrepreneur when we asked him about his plan, a couple of years down the line. Currently operating only in Maharashtra, the platform shows a promise of huge potential to grow. Marketyard is aiming forward to a Pan-India expansion in the near future, and for that, they are looking for external funding to accelerate Marketyard.

Considering the emerging concern of food deficit, lack of agro market research coupled with the sub-par quality & reach of credit flow, a technology based solution for agribusiness industry seems to be the need of the hour. If farmers are to get a fair price for their yield and traders are to be able to directly contact the farmers, we need a system that will not only bridge the communication gap but also heal the bleeding economic funnel in agribusiness sector in India.Thanks to Anil’s ‘Marketyard’, the farmers, traders and retailers can directly ‘Buy-Sell-Rent’ agricultural and livestock necessities. Consider Marketyard as a digital middleman with no bugs, no commission charges, no Dadagiri and a state of the art service.

Pick My Story believes that Anil Lade’s Marketyard will give the Indian agribusiness the boost it needs and we would love to know if you think so too. Install the application from Google Play Store and let us know either by dropping a comment down there or sending us a message on Facebook. Stay tuned and we will soon be here with some new stories on new business startup ideas!

A content developer with years of experience and a few months on top in writing corporate content, marketing content and web content. Sumit is a certified content marketer with a knowledge of digital marketing. As a seeded blog and article writer, Sumit will share his ideas, opinions and thoughts in here which will help you set-up your startup!

A content developer with years of experience and a few months on top in writing corporate content, marketing content and web content. Sumit is a certified content marketer with a knowledge of digital marketing. As a seeded blog and article writer, Sumit will share his ideas, opinions and thoughts in here which will help you set-up your startup!